Yard Sale Bloodbath

In his comment on our last post, Willy Callit mentioned one peculiar item we ran across:

Why on earth would anyone bother to keep a chocolate Nordstrom’s card for, apparently, decades?

I can’t really provide an answer to that one. But I can tell you who would bother to grab it out of someone’s free box …

I was just fascinated, especially considering it’s gotta be pretty ancient. (Nordstrom hasn’t used that logo in a looooong time.)

So I picked it up … although I already know it’s probably going to end up getting chucked into the ever-growing pile of stuff destined for my next sale. (See also: the yard sale catch and release program.)

After a week of relatively nice weather, Saturday morning started with dreaded rain. I am seriously ready for spring to start.

This week we had two guest stars, both first timers: Tokyo Rose and Willy Callit, both folks I know from doing roller derby. The first half of the morning was all of us catching up on what everyone has been up to. Jenny was probably bored senseless, but we all had a pretty good time. That’s a good thing since the sales ended up being the pits today. Even the sales that had pulled some items inside garages just had a bunch of junk. Wet baby clothes, toys, and books seemed to be the theme for the whole morning. Sales being cancelled due to the rain, and tons of driving in circles.

We hit some real duds and after grabbing some coffee we went to a school rummage sale. Sadly it turned out to be almost all kids donations, with a few books and records, and these clown figurines.

I became obsessed with this huge mound of plushy toys. I dared Jenny and Tokyo to jump into the stuffed animal mountain for $5. Some man leaned over and said “my son will do it for $5″ and I had to let him know that my offer was for adults only.

Tokyo bought this crazy board game from the ’80s that we were all fascinated by.

Next we hit two estate/garage sales. Really, is it an indoor yard sale or an estate sale?

Both ended up being a mish mash of different crap that didn’t seem to fit together. Once you are in a house you can tell when things just don’t seem like they belong. I loved the linoleum in the basement of the first sale and I left my phone number there to see about possibly buying it later.

At the second house, both Jenny and I were appalled by a woman selling reproduction floral barkcloth for $150. Ouch.

We drove around chasing after several sales where they had put tons of signs up, but ended up postponing their sale due to rain. In a moment of bad behavior Jenny pulled down one of these signs and threw it on the ground. This is something we talk about, but really never end up doing.

We wound down with what what turned out to be a sale being put on by folks from two local businesses, Velouria and Sonic Boom. Willy seemed a little bored, but was patient while the rest of us dug into the piles of women’s clothing. It was super cheap considering it had originally come from her boutique.

Both Jenny and I felt bad that our guest stars had chosen a day that turned out to be pretty lackluster. We told them to both come back another time when it would be nice and sunny out.